On Wednesday President Obama made a nationally televised address to the US population to confirm the resumption of prolonged military activity in Iraq and its extension to Syria, albeit without the deployment of regular ground troops.

Last Thursday's (17 July) air disaster, in which a Malaysian Airlines jetliner crashed near Ukraine's border with Russia, killing all 298 people on board, is likely to be the result of a missile fired from the ground - a commercial plane tragically caught up in the war Kiev and its imperialist backers are waging against Ukraine's eastern regions.

The US is marshalling its key forces in the offensive against the population of eastern and southern Ukraine. On the ground, the Kiev-controlled armed forces have been reconstituted so that shock troop are supplemented by fighters from the far-right Right Sector. Their aim is to crush any opposition to the pro-Western government installed by coup in Kiev.

The following article by Paul Atkin, challenging the myths promoted by the British government about World War I, was originally published by CND.

When Michael Gove wrote his piece in the Daily Mail lambasting “left wing myths” about World War One; he might have been surprised by the dusty response he received, even on that paper’s website. He’d set up the usual targets, fired off the accustomed clichés and blown some patriotic dog whistles, but 70 per cent of responses were hostile.

The following article by Jude Woodward, examining the new cold war the USA is whipping up against China, originally appeared on her New Cold War blog.

The United States has launched a confrontation with China that it is attempting to project as of Cold War dimensions. Its clear aim is to isolate China diplomatically and politically, threaten it militarily, force it to divert investment from the productive economy to military spending, exclude it from world markets and label it a ‘pariah’ state.

The crisis in Ukraine is escalating. Unable to quell a growing protest movement against the February coup, the Kiev regime has mobilised army units to attack the people occupying government buildings in the cities across Ukraine’s east. Meanwhile, to deter the Russian Federation intervening to protect the pro-Russian population, imperialism is rapidly increasing its military deployments across the region.

The Western backed parliamentary coup in the Ukraine was a significant advance for the US-led project of advancing its sphere of influence and pushing Russia further back in Eastern Europe. The US’s goals in the country have nothing to do with greater self-determination for Ukraine and are all about bringing it under imperialist control. Moreover this objective is not new, but has been the long-term aim of the US since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, to which end, aided and abetted by the EU, it has been funding and orchestrating pro-Western movements and organisations in Ukraine.

Having recouped the setbacks it experienced in the Middle East in 2011/12, imperialism has now hit some problems. These have largely arisen because imperialism, facing obstacles in the form of the Russia-China veto in the UN, the failure of Britain to back a military strike against Syria and pressures on its own military budgets, has relied on proxy military forces, including al-Qaeda inspired groups, to pursue its campaign to overthrow Assad. These now pose a threat to the West.

Five years into the current economic crisis it is possible to see beyond the immediate impact of the global financial crisis and recession to see clearly some of the structural shifts that have taken place. A key change that has taken place is a sharp fall in capital creation, and therefore investment, in the imperialist countries. Given that investment is responsible for the bulk of economic growth, there is no immediate possibility of rapid growth in these economies being recreated. The cumulative effect of the resulting economic stagnation in the imperialist centres lies behind the spreading of social and political instability to widening areas of the world.